Saturday, June 22, 2013

One of the other things we were able to do in Alaska was take a train. Train travel is de rigueur for tourist travel throughout the state. Even though we had rented a car for a portion of the trip I wanted to see what it was all about - and lets be realistic...I just wanted to ride on a vintage train and experience life at that pace.

We headed to the station in Anchorage and got there obscenely early which turned out to be a good thing. I got some coffee, wandered around their gift shop, and then settled down on a bench. A sweet grandfatherly man from Montreal was kind enough to have a patient conversation in French with me so I got to practice that for a while. My autodidactic strategy for learning French has been to ask anyone and everyone to speak French with me if I find out they speak it so this was a great bonus. I mostly speak French to people with North African accents so I had to adjust and listen closely to adjust to the accent!

Our first seats we picked were in the Dome car, which were awesome. You could see everything from up there. Eventually I figured out that the pictures were better from the open air spaces between the cars and there was a bit of a "party crew" out there - rambunctious anniversary celebrators from Texas or some other southern state on their way to an Alaskan cruise. They were awesome and just about the funniest people I've ever met while traveling. I shared my Wasabi peas with them and they almost fell over dead from the taste (him) and spice (her). I guess they're not for everyone!

We settled in to watch the scenery pass (and it was quite lovely!) after awhile and arrived to our destination on time and in fine style!

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